Quote Originally Posted by Nizzi View Post
Ifrit is only the slightly interesting summon in summoner's rotation lol
You don't need to time it for "use" as a movement tool, but it exists for that option if you know a fight's timeline. The job is already by far the easiest DPS job, it doesn't need to be made any easier.
You can talk about easy or not all you want, but two other Jobs had this same issue:

RDM Displacement vs Engagement
NIN Fleeting Raiju vs Forked Raiju

In both cases, the Devs decided forcing movement and animation lock for DPS gain as a "trade off" was a bad design.

In RDM's case, Engagement was originally a "safer" move at a DPS loss. It's now DPS neutral with Displacement and the player is allowed to choose Displacement if they need to get away from the boss quickly or Engagement if they aren't, which is slightly optimal for uptime...entirely because it doesn't have an animation lock.

In NIN's case, it was originally a sort of 1-2 combo - just like SMN - and it was removed because it seemed bad game design between the forced gap close (whether or not the fight at the time was really conducive to gap closes) and the animation lock.

Not only that, it would make SMN LESS braindead to actually have a CHOICE. Imagine a world where Ifrit gives you 1 charge of Ifrit's Favor that can be used on either a gap closer (which grants "Gap Closer -2 Ready" and lets you hit the second strike) or you can spend it on a ranged attack using the Astral Flow button (which grants "Ranged Attack -2 Ready" and lets you hit the second, also ranged, strike). Heck, you could even make the ranged option a DPS loss so that in a few patches it will be turned to DPS neutral anyway because people decide it's bad design.

There are absolutely ways to do it that are smart design-wise, and even if it was merely made a flat ranged 1-2 attack, it's not like SMN having to deal with a random gap closer is exactly galaxy brain design anyway.